Paul B. Brown: I am one of the co-authors of Just Start: Take action; embrace uncertainity and create the future, as well as an extremely proud Forbes alum. A former writer and editor at Business Week, Inc. and Financial World, in addition to my six years at Forbes, I've also written, co-written and “ghosted” numerous best-sellers including Customers for Life (with Carl Sewell.) A long-time contributor to The New York Times, I am also a contributing editor to both The Conference Board Review (where I also write a column) and M.I.T.’s Sloan Management Review.
Len Schlesinger: I am president of Babson College, widely recognized as the world’s leading educational institution for entrepreneurship. I formerly served as vice chairman and chief operating officer of Limited Brands.
Charles Kiefer: I am President of Innovation Associates, Inc., a firm I founded the firm in 1976. Along with Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline. The IA staff pioneered the body of concepts and methods now called organizational learning that enable large organizations to innovate, and to change from being driven by circumstance and managed through compliance, to being characterized by aspiration and deep commitment.

We are convinced that people in the 30s, 40s and early 50s have their heads in the sand, when it comes to whether their jobs—or their very industries—are going to survive.

We aren’t being critical. Just stating a totally understandable reality.

No one wants to face the fact that they could be unemployed, especially if the cause of that unemployment is through no fault of their own. And so they look at the radical changes that have come to industries as diverse as publishing and pay phones and say “those are the exceptions.”

But odds are they are not. You’d be hard pressed to find an industry that is not going through massive change. (Been to a record store lately? Drop off any photos to be processed? Read an afternoon paper [or been able to find a local morning one if you live in a small city]? Bought a printed map? Placed a call from your hotel room—through the hotel’s phone system? Ordered a set of encyclopedias? Rented a movie from a stand-alone video store like Blockbuster? Probably not.)

Here, let us spend a few minutes on what you shouldn’t over-invest in.

There has been a growing school of thought, which probably dates back to the wonderful Harvey MacKay books (Swim with the Sharks; Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty) that if your network is large enough, you’ll be able to rely on it to get out of any situation—including pending unemployment. Indeed, a full 25% of the recent best seller (and otherwise very good book) the Start Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, a work designed to help you navigate your career, is devoted to explaining how networking is vital to your future.

I am here to tell you it ain’t necessarily so. (My co-authors Len and Charlie don’t share my feelings on this. So, direct all the negative comments to me, please.)

Why isn’t networking THE answer? Let me give you four reasons.

1. You might not be good at it. I was talking to a 50-something friend about how networking is supposedly the best route to take when you are in search of a job and he gave us a response we love. “If that is the case, I will retire now. I suck at networking. I hate to do it. And I won’t do it.”

2, The people you know may be gone. If you haven’t done any networking in a while, you may discover that you know a lot fewer people than you think. People have the bad grace of dying, retiring or moving onto fields where they can’t be of very much help.

3. The people you know in your industry may be gone. I don’t know about you, but a lot of my friends are in the same industry as me. That isn’t surprising, of course. But if your industry is in trouble, then the jobs of your friends (in those same industries) are also in trouble. They probably won’t be in a position to do you any good. A good buddy of mine has just been “asked” to leave his high-paid columnist position at a publication you know. We had lunch immediately after it happened. I could commiserate. But I couldn’t think of a single publication that was hiring who could come close to affording him. Such is the state of journalism today.

4. The skills that you have may be irrelevant. The world may have changed radically, while you were putting in your 50, 60 or 70-hours a week in the past few years.

So, am I against networking? Absolutely not. It can be another resource you can draw on.

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I think this article while a nice 5min coffeee read, really reinforces the message of the value of your network & the books quoted. “You’re not good at it”? That isn’t a reason why it’s not, it’s a reason why it is (or certainly doesn’t take away from it’s value as the loose point of the article says)!

Are You Spending 1,000 hours Preparing For Your Next Job? is of much more value.

Paul, your commentary assumes that there aren’t people out here (like my colleagues and I) who actually teach the skills and strategies of face-to-face (F2F) networking – just for people who think they “suck at it” and for those who want to be better. There are lots of opportunities to learn how to F2F network effectively and have it actually be fun. Learning the “how to” of F2F networking also addresses the issues of having everyone in your same industry or having the people you know leave similar fields. Heck, it sometimes takes years to discover commonalities that will benefit you – but that isn’t a reason to give up on the whole F2F networking effort. Just like a lot of business acumen, learning the skills to do it strategically and effectively can be acquired. Come back to the light, Paul!

Thanks for the comment. I am going to call it out to see what others think.

I yield to your experience, but it is been my experience that when people network Face-To-Face, they still go to people in their industry (or related industries.) And if those industries are in trouble, having coffee with all the people in the world won’t help you.

But, as I said, I am going to make sure the whole Forbes-universe sees the comment and see if they agree with you I am all wet.

If you define networking as going to “networking” meetings, exchanging business cards with people you don’t know, or are not sure you want to associate with in the future, then who would “do” networking? If on the other hand one defines networking as giving time to causes and people you care about, meeting people in the course of that and making friends with them, then I’m all about networking.

When people changed the idea of getting to know people while doing interesting for fun things to a business task and called it networking, it took all the joy out of what should be a fundamental human activity and transformed it into a burden.

Thanks, Paul. I told all my business colleagues that I gave up networking in exchange for having coffee with friends, volunteering, going to events and helping people make connections. And it has changed my way of thinking. So when someone says, “Hey, let’s go to this networking event.” I always say no. If someone invites me to coffee, or an art opening or to go to lunch with a group, I say yes. I decided I want meaningful connections with people I care about. And as the poet writes, “And that has made all the difference.”

I agree with Cheryl. People have taken relationship building and dumbed it down by calling it “networking”. Fact is, a huge part of life is centered around relation ships. And for crying out loud, do NOT try to “network” by using an opportunistic approach – people can see right through that. Instead, focus on how you can potentially enrich or augment someone’s life, business, career, etc… Like any relationship – it’s not about what you can take, but rather what you can bring to the table. Overall, great article. We must expand our sights beyond the peripheral of our chosen industry. After all, this is the information age; why would you expect anything less than constant change? Adapt, evolve, succeed. Happy 2013!